Free Cotter's England by Christina Stead Page A

what a soul! She knows the black. She'd walk boldly right into it."
    She brushed her eyes and blew her nose.
    'You couldn't. I see. The path's narrow and dark, you've lost your footing, the swamp mud would fill your nose and ears and eyes—"
    Caroline was staring at her. She said, "Why?"
    "Because you're turning down the hand that's offered to you. No good will come to you. Don't you want, Caroline, to go deep down into yourself and find out what is there? Is this surface thing you? Find out. Then you will understand; then the way will be clear. Come, let us introspect."
    But Caroline refused. It was very late. She was exhausted and she found it hard to understand Nellie's words.
    "Well, all right, Caroline: you need sleep. We'll talk it through tomorrow."
    She rose with a gallant bright smile and kissed Caroline on the cheek, saying, "Bless you, darling."
     
     

Mr Cotter had…
     
    M R . COTTER had not been feeling very well, as he told it in his Sunday and Monday, his Tuesday and Wednesday pubs, his Thursday, Friday and Saturday pubs; in the Atheneum and football Clubs; to his clients and colleagues in the insurance business; to the Mother Superior, and to Mrs. Riggs, a divorced woman who had been acting strangely since her divorce; and to all the policemen after whose health he enquired and who kindly enquired after his own. It was no surprise therefore when Mr. Thomas Cotter went into hospital and it was in the local newspapers as an item of interest; Thomas Cotter, who as a young professional footballer had played for Wales.
    Mr. Cotter had an anesthetic and went under the knife; and when he came out of it he was worse than before. "They kept me in the hospital," the big man said genially, between spasms of agony, "for they had to empty the liquor out of my veins and put blood in before they would operate. They tested me: they found I was ninety proof"; and when his visitors twitched and paled to see him lying down there in such terrible pain, he said in his large way, "It's not the worst; the very worst is Tuesday, when they'll be talking about me at the Cross Keys, if I'm not there, as if I were a dead man. It's Tuesday and where is Thomas Cotter? I don't like to think of it." His next operation was to be in a few days. The first had been a success; "If that's what you call a success," he said, jumping at a stab of pain; "I was all right, I was just a little down, till they started on me and found out all my secrets! And now they can't stop; they've got to go on and on." But on Wednesday, he couldn't help feeling depressed that he was absent from the Princess, his Wednesday pub. What would they be saying, that Thomas Cotter was a goner? On Thursday, the night before his operation, with his stitches and his pain, he got out of bed at eight o'clock at night, put on a hospital dressing gown and telling a taxi driver he knew, whom he found outside the hospital gates, that he was discharged, he got him to unload him at the Ravenscourt, his Thursday pub. There he had a fine time, half doubled with pain, but of interest to all, before the taxi driver, struck with doubt, and the tavernkeeper, struck with compunction, insisted upon getting him back to hospital; for now, for the lark and for the pain, Mr. Thomas Cotter freely admitted that he had climbed the wall, fooled the sentry, escaped from jail. He got back somehow and pretended that he had only been a bit of time in the men's room; and the next day, he died under the anesthetic, so that he would have felt himself quite justified in going out for his last drink, if he could have known.
    There never was the funeral of a private person in Bridgehead or surrounding districts, like that of Thomas Cotter. All his friends were there. There were those from the assurance company, colleagues and clients, a group from two of his pubs, the Tuesday and Saturday, and a big wreath from his fellow drinkers of the Thursday for whom he had given his life; and. it was thought very small